1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a container for transporting roll cargo and an apparatus for preventing roll cargo from incurring divergence of roll core on the way of transportation, more particularly, to a novel container for transporting roll cargo and a novel apparatus which prevents roll cargo from incurring divergence of roll core from the original condition taking place on the way of sea/land transportation.
2. Description of the Related Art
Of a variety of steel materials exported from Japan for example, majority of hot coils are delivered to general iron works, and thus, these hot coils have sizable thickness. On arrival at processing factories of the imported country, these hot coils are sheared into predetermined length or rerolled before eventually being delivered to markets.
Now, looking at the method of transporting hot coils having sizable thickness, unit weight is variable according to the shape and dimension. Normally, hot coils are handled by transportation specialists as heavy cargo. In many cases, hot coils are shipped on a conventional freight vessel at a specially installed quay of a steel mill by applying special cranes. Any conventional freight vessel transports a huge bulk of hot coils in the condition preventing them from breaking loose by heavily binding them with lumber dunnage, wedges, chocks, and wires, while directly stacking hot coils on double-bottomed deck inside of the hold in multiple rows and layers. Normally, unit weight of each hot coil is quite heavy and often exceeds the allowable loading capacity of any conventional container, and thus, actually, hot coils are not transported by any container failing under ISO standard.
On the other hand, recently export of complete coils made from sheets from Japan increases, which are typically used for manufacturing automotive parts in local factories of the imported country. These complete coils are directly delivered to press work of the automotive part manufacturing line without being reprocessed by local factories, i.e., in the ex-Japanese factory condition. It is therefore extremely important for those who are responsible for the transportation to thoroughly safeguard the shipped hot coils from incurring deformation and/or damage caused by breakdown of cargo on the way of transportation or by careless loading and unloading operations or by adverse effect of binding members.
On the other hand, local factories on the part of the imported country are not always at a site close to harbors, but in many cases, these are located in the inland areas. As a result, complete hot coils are subject to overland transportation until arrival at the designated local factory via trucks or freight trains after unloading them from the freight vessel at the port. Therefore, it is very important for those being in charge of transportation to carefully protect the complete sheet coils from incurring deformation and/or damage on the way of overland transportation.
More particularly, when transporting complete sheet coils by means of a freight vessel, these coils are directly stacked in multiple rows and layers in the hold. Consequently, complete sheet coils are subjected to heavy-weight pressure generated by multiple-layer stack, while they are also subjected to lateral pressure generated by rolling and pitching of the freight vessel itself. In addition, the roll cargo is subjected to repeated loading and unloading processes on the way of distribution and also to additional load generated by binding apparatus. As a result, shape of the roll cargo is frequently deformed and cargo itself also incures substantial damage. Since overland transportation must be executed in many cases, those accidents can take place more frequently.
Taking those critical problems into consideration, the inventor tried to materialize transportation of sheet-coils or wire coils (hereinafter merely called hot coils as a whole) by storing them in an ISO standard container. Nevertheless, it became clear for the inventor that, if hot coils were merely stored inside of the ISO container, external force against the freight vessel or train adversely affects loaded hot coils, thus causing them to displace inside of the container, and then, hot coils might be subjected to unexpected pressure enough to deform these coils, or friction might be generated between the loaded hot coils to result in the grave damage. In the light of those critical problems mentioned above, the inventor could not materialize the aimed object for a long while. Furthermore, since hot coils are prepared in a variety of forms for shipment and there are substantial differences in the dimension and weight of these coils, the constitution of the container itself needs to be compatible with a wide variety of hot coils. Consequently, it was quite difficult for the inventor to devise practical art for achieving the aimed object.
Not only hot coils, there were similar problems in the transportation of roll papers available for newspaper etc.